The Sheriff of Ramadi: Navy SEALS and the Winning of al-Anbar

Introduction

Writing a book about unfolding current events is tricky business. Things change; the ideas and assumptions you make at the beginning of a project sometimes don’t hold as you make your way through the effort. It becomes incrementally more difficult when you’re writing about events in an active combat theater. And finally, when your subject matter is the operational activity of Navy SEALs in Iraq, well, the events you’re trying to bring in focus can be complex, fast-paced, and dynamic. Writing about them often becomes, as we say in the Navy, a stern chase, and a stern chase is a tough one. This was never more the case than when I set out to document the role of the Nave SEALs in the Battle of Ramadi.

In the spring of 2006, a former Navy SEAL came to me with an interesting story. We had become friends in 2000 when I was working on The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 (Crown, 2001). At that time he was the officer in charge of the Third Phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training—the famous BUD/S training, or SEAL basic course. He told me of a brother SEAL who had just returned from Iraq, where he commanded the SEAL task unit (TU) in Ramadi, and of the unique and groundbreaking things the SEALs were doing there. I had just passed through Ramadi in May 2006, en route to the Army Special Forces advanced operating base at Al Asad Air Base, farther up the Euphrates River Valley. The helicopter stopped in Ramadi at the Marine base at Hurricane Point to drop off two passengers before continuing on. All I knew about Ramadi then was that it was very dangerous and a place to avoid. The gunners in the H-60 Blackhawk never removed the ammunition belts from their M240 machine guns in Ramadi, as they had at other stops along the way. When we left, the pilot didn’t fly out low over the city, but spiraled up within the perimeter of the base as a precaution against small-arms fire. At a safe altitude, we then headed northwest for Al Asad. I knew we had SEALs in Ramadi, but nothing of their work there. On this particular trip, my mission was Army Special Forces. My visit to Al Asad followed the year I’d spent at Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall for the writing of Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior (Crown, 2007). Little did I suspect at that time that my next book would take me back to Ramadi some fifteen months later, and I would again fly into Ramadi by helo, but this time for a longer stay.

I was immediately intrigued when I began to learn of this first SEAL task unit in Ramadi. What were the SEALs doing in Ramadi? What was their mission? Al-Anbar province was a Marine area of operations. How did the SEALs fit into the battle plan for this contentious province? First, I needed to learn more about this place called Ramadi. A quick Web search gave me a range of accounts of the fighting there—from Washington Post articles to the numerous blogs to wikipedia.com. The information was sketchy, contradictory, and uniformly bad—bad in that by all accounts we were getting our butts kicked in al-Anbar province and especially in Ramadi. In the fall of 2006, I could find nothing in print regarding Ramadi or al-Anbar that was positive.

Al-Anbar province is the size of North Carolina and comprises the western third of the nation of Iraq. It has 10 percent of the people, nearly all of which are tribal and Sunni. There are limited resources and no oil. Ramadi is the provincial capital, with close to half the population of the province. Ramadi is to al-Anbar province what Baghdad is to Iraq; as Ramadi goes, so goes all of al-Anbar. All that had become difficult, dangerous, and frustrating in Iraq seemed to be that much worse out west in Ramadi and al-Anbar.

The articles and information I began to compile on Ramadi painted a bleak picture indeed, and wikipedia.com, the perennial Web-hit leader on Ramadi, flatly declared that Ramadi and al-Anbar were lost and that the insurgents had soundly beaten the Army and the Marines in the Battle of Ramadi. Wikipedia held this view well into June 2007. Yet I was intrigued. If this was a battle lost, what were the SEALs doing in Ramadi? They had taken their maritime commando skills into the mountains of Afghanistan, on the road to Baghdad, and into the Iraqi capital itself. Now, what were they doing out west—in Sunni tribal lands of al-Anbar in a losing cause? How had the SEAL mission changed from those early days of the conflict—when we were in hot pursuit of Taliban fighters in the Hindu Kush and the Baathist holdouts in Baghdad? The al-Qaeda-led insurgency seemed to be the more robust in Ramadi than elsewhere in Iraq. What were the SEALs doing there to meet this growing insurgent presence? The answers to these questions were not on Google or in the newspapers, and certainly there was no help from the talking heads of the major networks. I needed to go to San Diego and to the SEAL base on the Coronado amphibious base to learn more about SEAL operations in Ramadi.

In the late fall of 2006, I met with one of the returning task unit commanders, the second TU commander of the four that you will meet in this book. He had only just left Ramadi and was recently assigned to train West Coast SEALs and other Naval Special Warfare assets preparing for combat rotation. I told him of my research and the consensus of opinion, both in and out of the military, that we were losing both in Ramadi and in al-Anbar. I even had with me a copy of a pessimistic summary of a Marine Corps intelligence report that cited the deteriorating security conditions across the province. The report argued that we haven’t been defeated militarily, but we have been defeated politically—and that’s where wars are won and lost. This dismal report was dated 16 August and leaked by the Washington Post in an article by Thomas Ricks (author of Fiasco) on 11 September. The report was being widely shopped around Washington by those who opposed the war. It all but conceded Ramadi and al-Anbar to the al-Qaeda-led insurgents.

Sir, I don’t know what you’ve been reading or where you’re getting your information, this veteran Ramadi task unit commander told me, but in Ramadi, we’re winning—we’re kicking some serious butt. If this country doesn’t lose its nerve and quit the fight, we’ll win all of al-Anbar.

This was the first I’d heard that we were not losing the battle in western Iraq. So what was the truth? From experience, I knew that sometimes warriors immersed in the daily skirmishes may have a myopic perspective on the course of the battle—the big picture. It’s a can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees thing. But this task unit commander spoke soberly and with some assurance. And he had been one of the key players in the battle.

What I came to learn was that the SEALs were locked in deadly combat, often on a daily basis, and often with some of the most dedicated and vicious of the enemy insurgents. Hard as it was, they were not only holding their own but also making a grim harvest of insurgent fighters. And we were making progress; it was a costly battle, but by any number of criteria, we were winning. As one might imagine, the SEALs were on the cutting edge of this fight in al-Anbar—kinetic operations, as the operators like to put it. They brought their guns and their shooting skills to the fight. They also brought innovative command-and-control solutions to this battle and developed some unique information and data-manage-ment applications—the all-important operations-intelligence fusion that now drive SEAL combat operations. I also came to learn that the SEAL operations in Ramadi, and by extension in all of al-Anbar, seemed to represent a best-practices approach to the marriage of conventional security forces and SOF, or special operations forces. This was indeed something new—an SOF-conventional-force fusion. And, we were winning militarily and politically.

After speaking with a number of SEALs who had served in Ramadi and al-Anbar, I began to think this had the makings of an important book. It appeared to me at the time that the SEAL operations across al-Anbar province were evolving into a compelling chapter in the battle history of the Navy SEALs. Furthermore, the SEAL task unit in Ramadi seemed an ideal surrogate for this story. And not that I needed additional incentive, but SEAL operations in Iraq were taking place out west, albeit western Iraq. The informal title of that first task unit commander was the Sheriff of Ramadi. Now I was really interested. And after having spent a tour of duty with the Army Special Forces, I saw this as a good chance to repatriate myself back into the Naval Special Warfare community. There was certainly a story here—an important story.

I believe this is an important book for a number of reasons. First of all, the operations in Ramadi marked the return of the SEALs to the mission of foreign internal defense, or FID, one of helping local security forces to defend their neighborhoods and communities against insurgents. I say return because during the early days of Vietnam the newly formed Navy SEAL teams worked almost exclusively in an advisory role. During their involvement in that decade-long conflict, SEALs were never more effective than when they were working with the locals. In Ramadi SEALs found themselves in the middle of a very nasty insurgency. They were immediately thrust into a FID role, training and working with Iraqi army scouts. But Ramadi had no rear-area training base, nor was there an established, proscribed training curriculum. And time was short; there was a battle raging, and the insurgent opposition seemed to be growing stronger daily. Training the Iraqi army scouts proved to be an on-the-job proposition in a dangerous and dynamic operational environment. This led to the SEAL adaption of the FID mission—combat FID. They proved to be pioneers in this new form of foreign internal defense in a hostile, counterinsurgent environment.

Second, this book is yet another validation of this most versatile and innovative component of our special operations forces. Since their origin as the Navy frogmen of World War II, SEALs have had neither the luxury nor the burden of existing military doctrine. Most of the time, they’ve been given a task and simply told to do it. From the landing beaches in the western Pacific in World War II, through the jungles of Vietnam, and into the recent active theaters, our present-day SEALs, in keeping with their heritage, have been creative by necessity. They are team-centric in their training and their approach to operations; leadership is often shared from the platoon officer in charge down to the junior enlisted SEAL. In each new conflict of their short history, they’ve had to develop the right tactics and methods through trial and error. If one approach didn’t solve the problem, they were quick to find one that would. In al-Anbar province, this current generation put their own particular spin on training Iraqi scouts in counterinsurgency and used their unique combat skill set to augment our conventional military forces in a conventional battlespace. SEALs did this in Mosul and Habbaniyah as well, but it was in Ramadi where they perfected combat FID—where they developed the tactics and procedures that will serve them in the next insurgency. It was also in Ramadi that they integrated their SOF skill set in a conventional-force battlespace to help break al-Qaeda’s grip on al-Anbar.

Third, the operations in Ramadi represent the high-water mark in the professional development of the Navy SEALs; they were magnificent in the vicious combat operations that were to eventually rout al-Qaeda in Ramadi. When I speak with those not in the military, they seem to think that all Navy SEALs are large, ferocious men—brawny but not having much in the way of brains, much as they might be depicted by Hollywood. Don’t misunderstand, these warriors are hard men, but what sets them apart is the diverse professional skill set they bring to the battlefield. They fight hard and they fight smart. They not only trained their Iraqis in fighting insurgents in Ramadi, they also led them into battle and fought alongside them. They extended the term brother to the soldiers and Marines they fought alongside. When I began the project, it seemed as if the insurgents in Ramadi and al-Anbar province would win. Everything I read pointed to it. Initially, I thought I’d be documenting a gallant effort in a losing cause—a gutsy stand, but one fought from the decks of the Titanic. But I was reading too many mainstream media accounts of what was happening in Ramadi and al-Anbar. Along with all those journalists filing current stories about the war in western Iraq, I was wrong. As it played out, the Battle of Ramadi was won, and the Navy SEALs had a hand in it.

And finally, this book is important as it documents the battlefield courage and dedication of these special maritime warriors. I’ve come to believe that no group of SEALs in the history of Naval Special Warfare fought more gallantly than the Ramadi SEALs. Certainly SEALs have never fought such a continuous battle in such a lethal environment as Ramadi. There were new men in each SEAL task unit, but most were veterans going back on their second, third, and fourth combat tour. While we at home played the political blame game ad nauseam, these quiet professionals went back to the fight—again and again. They were either recovering from the last deployment or preparing for the next one. A part of this story is how these professionals felt, repeatedly going into harm’s way, while most Americans are more focused on their sports team or the next episode of American Idol. So this book is important to me personally, for these are my brothers, a generation or two removed. Their war has become as unpopular at home as mine was, but on that score there’s one fortunate difference. During Vietnam, the nation turned against the war and the warriors, many of whom were draftees—involuntary participants. Today, for now, it’s just the war. Interesting. Most Americans, the pundits tell us, oppose this war but still support the troops, even as the gulf between our all-volunteer force and the people they serve widens. But whatever the resolution of events in Iraq, the SEALs who served in Ramadi and al-Anbar can say they won. They helped to win the west.

I began my writing career in 1989, and this is my twelfth book. As I’ve indicated above, I personally believe this is an important work, perhaps my most important. You’re probably wondering how, with eleven books under the keel, I can make this assertion, but with your indulgence, I’m going to get a little personal. Let’s go back to when I started—back to when word processors were not all that common and a Selectric typewriter, with that little spool of white correction tape, was a really big deal.

Men approaching midlife often become apprehensive and a little insecure. That comes when you begin to see the glass as more than half empty rather than over half full. For those of us who became warriors in our youth and knew the adrenaline high of active combat, sitting behind a desk in your mid-forties can be a little unfulfilling. And unless you’re very unusual or living in some kind of a fantasy world, active combat, at least active combat as a special operator, is for young men. Every man deals with this in his own way; I became a writer. I decided that if I could no longer run with the young dogs, maybe I could write about it—maybe that would ease me through my midlife passage. It’s a behind-the-desk skill rather than a behind-the-gun skill, but it sure beat making sales calls or running a corporate marketing program. At least that’s how it was for me. Yet I certainly didn’t burst upon the literary scene with a best seller. It took several books before I was able to quit my daytime job.

I began writing novels and was lucky enough to have some initial success. It was a creative endeavor and allowed me to follow my characters on some great adventures. Since my first novels were military fiction, I included lots of action. There was the thrill of combat without the danger, so much so that at times I almost felt like a fraud. Each day my characters and I would plan and execute daring special operations. I was surprised at how real it could be. I felt the responsibility and apprehension of the commanders who sent young men into battle; I felt the cold detachment of killing a man, even though he might well deserve a bullet. I felt the team leader’s desperate sense of loss when one of his men was killed or badly wounded. Even behind the typewriter or word processor, it can get emotional. When I was writing the final chapter of Rising Wind (Naval Institute Press, 1996) my wife found me early one morning, sitting at the keyboard and bawling like a baby. My main character, a terrific fellow who had been with me in a previous novel, had just been killed. He didn’t see it coming. And neither did I! I’d just lost a very close friend. This may sound like a stretch for some readers, but when I’m on my game writing fiction, I see the action—in color. Hell, I can even smell it. In many ways I’m just following along behind the men in the fight, like an observer. And when I’m really into my craft, the characters take charge; they become independent actors. These fictional warriors train, fight, experience fear, win, lose, fail, and sometimes die. I’m just there taking notes from a safe distance. And that’s when I feel like a fraud.

Then I began writing nonfiction, books like The Sheriff of Ramadi, and things changed. Candidly, it got a lot harder. I had to leave my little fantasy world and enter the realm of real warriors—but still only as an observer. In writing novels I get to go and hang out with my imaginary friends for three or four hours a day. But a nonfiction book is a 110,000-word term paper. More to the point, my characters are actual people, and I have to try to understand the world through their senses. What did they see? How did they feel? What did their battlefield smell like and what was the depth of their struggle and hardship? How do they handle the loss of a teammate? I try hard to get it right, but it’s not easy. Often two men in the same combat action will have divergent accounts of what took place. So I have to ask the right questions, and I have to listen very carefully. When possible, I ask the person or persons who were there to read my account of their action to make sure I’m on target. But I have an advantage that most writers don’t have; I’ve been there. Today’s special operators are better trained and far more professional than they were in my day, but a firefight is still a firefight—the adrenaline, the ambiguities, the violence, and the fear are much the same. The emotions that accompany the taking of life, or having a teammate wounded or killed, don’t change.

In writing a novel, I work hard to make everything fit. I can change scenes, shape my characters, and orchestrate events for tone and pace to build suspense in telling the story. If something doesn’t seem right to me, I change it. Sometimes I try to mislead or fool the reader with a false plot. This is the make-believe world of the novelist. Not so in nonfiction. I have a duty to write it as the men in the arena experienced it—to tell their story as faithfully as I can. From my work as a novelist, I use dialogue and do what I can to position the reader close to the warrior—in the squad file, so to speak—so he or she can experience and feel the events as they happened. But it’s those warriors’ story, not mine. To the best of my ability, the text has to match their perception and be in keeping with the recollections of those who were there. And while writing nonfiction is more difficult and time consuming, there’s an overriding benefit that makes it all worth it. I get to mingle with some of the finest young warriors in America.

The extended nature of the war in Iraq has generated some deep divisions in our nation. It’s not yet over; it might not be for some time. Our war is with those who hate America and all it stands for. Amid the promise and prosperity that is America, we now live with this thing called terrorism. Terrorism, and even that misnomer, the global war on terror, have come to represent all that is evil and threatening to our way of life. Only a few decades ago, it was Communism. In retrospect, the Communists and their sponsor, the old Soviet Union, were rational enemies. Even so, terror itself is not the enemy, but rather the tactic of our current enemy, the Islamic extremists, and they are anything but rational. It’s simply unfortunate that western liberal democracies and their open economic infrastructures are vulnerable to this tactic we know as terrorism.

If terror is just an enemy tactic, a useful instrument in their jihad, then what is their strategy—their plan to defeat any secular change we might want to see advanced in the Muslim world? How do they oppose the desire for self-determination that many Muslims want? In a word, it’s insurgency. From the perspective of those who wish to challenge freedom, democracy (economic or political), or any form of enfranchisement or a will of the majority, insurgency is a very effective tool. Its value is that it allows for a tyranny of the minority. A society’s first duty is to provide order and security for its people. Insurgents, though they may be small in number, can challenge that order. Insurgents use terror, brutality, intimidation, and murder to achieve their ends. They can strike at a time of their choosing, and are not bound by societal norms that usually govern national or local security forces. And if American forces enter that nation to promote order and help with security, you can be sure that our rules of engagement, which reflect our values, will be far more restrictive than those of our enemies. The insurgents have no such rules or restrictions. The fact that any excess that violates our humane standards of conduct becomes national and international news, while barbarity on their part is given a pass, is simply a tactical downside of a culture we choose to defend.

I wish I could say that our insurgent problems in Iraq are something new and different, but that’s not the case. Our inability to control insurgents in Vietnam eventually led to our defeat there. There are those who don’t like to compare Vietnam to Iraq; I’m not one of them. There are just too many similarities. After World War II and the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union began, we entered an era of regional conflicts. Korea initially pitted United Nations/American conventional forces against North Korea and, finally, the Chinese army—waves of them. The two sides fought to a standoff and an armistice was signed. Officially, that war has never ended, and we still have 18,000 troops there.

Vietnam began like Korea. The veteran North Vietnamese Army, which had beaten the French, thought they could handle the Americans as well. General Vö Nguyên Giáp, who orchestrated the final French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, felt that if he could choose the time and place, he could win on the battlefield and force an American withdrawal. He tried that in 1968. During that year he called for an uprising of Vietcong guerrillas during Tet. He also ordered multiple divisions of North Vietnamese regulars to surround the American forces near Khe Sanh. Giáp hoped to cause a countrywide disruption in South Vietnam and bring about a Dien Bien Phu–like surrender at Khe Sanh. But he didn’t count on the U.S. Marine Corps or American airpower. The Vietcong attacks were repulsed across the South and especially at Hue, where the Marines took the measure of a large VC force in some of the most intense fighting of that war. At Khe Sanh whole North Vietnamese brigades were slaughtered by Marine artillery, B-52 strikes, and American tactical airpower. By the North’s own estimates, more than 52,000 Vietcong and North Vietnamese were killed around Hue and Khe Sanh alone. Seven hundred thirty-five marines died at Khe Sanh; 216 at Hue. That the American media ceded the victory to the enemy does not change the fact that the VC and the NVA took a terrible beating in the field—so much so that the North was forced to change how it waged war. Our enemies focused on insurgent warfare, and five years later they sent us home—something they could never have done by sheer force of arms. Why is this important? It codified the strategy of how to defeat superior American military power. Vietnam perfected the tools of the insurgent: Hide among the people and coerce them to support the insurgency or at least remain neutral. Conduct guerrilla-type attacks using the population for refuge and cover. And if there is resistance from the people, use murder and intimidation to quickly stem it.

Sad as it may be, here we are again. We have a superb military, one without peer in maneuver, expeditionary, and (God help us) nuclear warfare. In 2003 the nation and the world witnessed this superiority as the Army and the Marines rolled up the Tigris and the Euphrates to Baghdad. But we were ill-prepared for the aftermath—our role as an occupation force and countering the insurgency that followed. As occupiers, we don’t do a very good job. In many cases occupation requires a strong and sometimes brutal hand with the civilian population. To our credit, we really don’t want soldiers and marines to be that rigorous with the locals; it’s simply not how our young warriors should conduct themselves. Occupation worked after World War II because we destroyed the armies of our enemies along with their economy and most of their infrastructure. In Iraq the economy was in shambles well before we arrived. We disbanded rather than destroyed Saddam Hussein’s army, and we left the infrastructure intact—a ready-made sanctuary for insurgents. The insurgency, with its terror, ethnic animosity, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and foreign fighters grew quickly. And we reacted too slowly—in retrospect, perhaps criminally so, but that’s another story. There have been and are sure to be more books on that score. Our conventional forces are capable of counterinsurgency warfare. Indeed, it is one of the missions of the U.S. Army. But it was only after the insurgency was in full bloom that we began to adopt effective counterinsurgent tactics. Our special operations forces can be quite good at counterinsurgency when it’s their operational focus. But an insurgency of this scale requires diplomatic, political, and military skill, and, as we will see in The Sheriff of Ramadi, close cooperation between conventional and special operations forces. Following the heady days after the fall of Baghdad, we faltered. In retrospect it was almost as if we brought a knife to a gunfight—again! Modern counterinsurgency warfare belongs to the agile. We were simply not quick enough.

Counterinsurgency warfare is not rocket science, but it’s highly reliant on people. Technology and systems are important, but it’s the people who count. Our people for sure, but, more important, also their people. An insurgency is a battle for the people—not the ground. We can never win and never go home unless we’ve empowered the people to effectively engage the insurgents—and to successfully defend their neighborhoods, communities, cities, and nation. They have to provide for their own internal security. In the case of Iraq, this means in the cities, with more modern forms of secular government, as well as in the rural areas that are secular as well as tribal. If we’d made Baghdad look like Dresden, the job of bringing some form of democracy to Iraq would have been easier—a lot easier. But we didn’t. The armored columns that overran southern Iraq and pushed into Baghdad went out of their way not to lay waste to the cities and the land. In fact, during those dramatic days when our 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were on the move, the focus of the SEAL mission taskings was to seize and protect key oil-pumping and transportation facilities for future use by the Iraqi people. Within a year those same facilities that we risked lives to save became targets for insurgent terrorist tactics.

Back to Ramadi. As you will see in this book, the Army and the Marine Corps, with the help of the Navy SEALs and the Iraqi army, defeated al-Qaeda and their insurgents in Ramadi. They took the streets back, neighborhood by neighborhood. But then something highly unusual and most essential happened. The people of Ramadi, led by their tribal leaders, took ownership of the streets the American and Iraqi forces had reclaimed. The people—the tribes—sealed the victory won by our forces, and al-Qaeda was defeated. Credit the leadership of the Army and Marine commanders for recognizing and promoting this reenfranchisement. The people came over to our side, turned against al-Qaeda, and the battle was won. Whatever happens in Iraq, this is a template for a successful major counterinsurgency operation.

As the nation begins to come to grips with our adventure, or misadventure, in Iraq, there will be many questions about what went wrong, who’s to blame, what should have been done, and finally, what we need to do next. There will be no shortage of targets for blame: Bush, Rumsfeld, the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) controversy, the dismantling of the Iraqi army, too few troops, the wrong mix of troops, the lack of cultural understanding, ineffective senior military leadership, and so on and so on. I’ll leave the analysis of what went wrong and what we should have done to others, although I may be unable to resist a comment or two in the epilogue. This is a book about insurgency and how a brave group of SEALs, fighting alongside their Army and Marine Corps brothers, dealt with that insurgency in Ramadi. The Sheriff of Ramadi is a battlefield book. It will document how special operations forces, in this case Navy SEALs, brought their courage and their skills to the insurgent battlefield in one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq—and won. It’s also a story of how these maritime warriors took their skills to the fight with the Iraqis they trained. I hope it will serve as a case study for future insurgencies, as I fear we will have many more Ramadis in our future.

This book spans the period of time from when the first full SEAL task unit was stood up in October 2005, through the Battle of Ramadi, until the redeployment of the fourth task unit in October 2007. In short, it’s the story of the SEALs in Ramadi during the Battle of Ramadi. When I first learned of this task unit, and the informal moniker, the Sheriff of Ramadi, that was applied to the first commander of this task unit, I thought, What a great title for a book. My publisher at the time thought so as well. But this title met with a great deal of resistance from the individual task unit commanders as well as the platoon SEAL operators. They were very reluctant to have themselves portrayed or credited with anything but a supporting role in the battle. And they were very insistent—make that emphatic—that in telling the Ramadi SEAL story, I did nothing to take away from the courage and professionalism of the soldiers and marines who carried the brunt of the battle. While this book is about SEALs, I’ve tried to fairly represent their contributions in this battle as well as the leading role of the conventional forces. As for praising the SEALs and their efforts in the Battle of Ramadi, I’ll leave that to the conventional-force commanders and soldiers who fought with them. But the title remains. There was, as you will see in later chapters, a Sheriff of Ramadi, and he stood tall amid the chaos of the battle. He just wasn’t a Navy SEAL.

I’ve had the opportunity to observe SOF-conventional-force interaction both stateside and in Iraq. It can be a little turfy stateside, and over there not every deployed Army or Marine conventional commander wanted a group of Navy SEALs moving about his area of operations. Yet in Ramadi, it worked, and worked well. Perhaps it was the vicious nature of this battle that forced this SOF-conventional cooperation. I happen to believe it was the professionalism of all involved, each playing their role and bringing their individual talents to focus on the enemy. It was also an issue of mutual respect. And in that vein, I hope this story will serve as an example of just how effective special operations and conventional forces can be when they work together and when they play to the strengths that each brings to the battlefield.

My other nonfiction books about SEALs and Army Special Forces were challenging, but this one was especially so. One might think that Navy SEALs returning from battle are anxious to tell their story. Not so. These are professional warriors, and they are very self-sufficient in their service. They seek approval from their teammates and understanding within their family circle and close friends, but they don’t seem to need the gratitude of others. The SEALs I interviewed invariably wanted to deflect talk of their own contributions and tell me about those of others. The platoon SEALs, the ones who took to the streets of Ramadi with the Iraqis they trained, were especially generous in their praise of the soldiers and marines with whom they shared the battlespace. They also credited a great deal of their success to the work of the non-SEAL support elements within their task unit organization. The senior leadership within the SEAL platoons invariably cited the leadership of their task unit commanders for their operational success. As for the individual task unit commanders, once we got passed the sheriff thing, they wanted to talk about the conventional commanders who supported them and the selfless service of those in their commands—their SEAL operators as well as their task unit support elements. When I spoke with the conventional commanders who served in Ramadi, they had nothing but praise for